4 things that make up your BLOOD
1. Plasma (liquid stuff)
Published in
1 min readMar 28, 2017
- Plasma make up 55% of your blood’s volume
- Plasma is made of 92% water
- The other 8% contains proteins, nutrients, salts, enzymes, and other stuff your cells need
- Its color is clear/off-white
- Plasma is like the river that keeps all the other blood cells flowing throughout the body
2. Red Blood Cells (erythrocytes)
- Red Blood Cells, or RBCs, make up 45% of your blood’s volume
- RBCs are the most numerous cells in your blood
- RBCs contain hemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen to the cells and carbon dioxide waste away from cells
3. White Blood Cells (leukocytes)
- White Blood Cells, or WBCs, make up about 1% of your blood’s volume
- WBCs protect the body from invaders and infections disease
- WBCs are formed in the bone marrow and only live for about a day
- Leukemia (from ‘leukocyte’) is a type of cancer when your bone marrow produces malformed white blood cells that don’t do your job and prevent your blood from being healthy
4. Platelets (thrombocytes)
- Platelets make up less than 1% of your blood’s volume
- Platelets help form blood clots to repair tears in your arteries, veins, or capillaries
- Not enough platelets = you bleed
- Too many platelets = halts blood flow and can lead to stroke
